The Ways of Evil Men (17 page)

Crazy Ana thought the prospector might have been speaking of a gasoline-powered dredge. Gasoline-powered dredges were used in water. If she was right, the gold was in a river. And because it was a small-scale operation, they were using mercury to extract it.

Mercury killed fish!

It was full dark by now. Maura got to her feet and strolled over to the Grand. It was early in the evening, and the place was still bereft of customers. Amanda was behind the bar, leafing through an ancient magazine. Once again, she appeared eager for company.

“I understand the fishing around here is pretty good,” Maura said, taking a seat.

“The best,” Amanda said. “What’ll you have?”

“A beer, please. Brahma, if you’ve got it.”

“I’ve got it.”

Amanda wiped off the top of a can, popped it, and set a glass next to it.

“How did it go with Ana?” she asked as Maura poured. “Did you manage to talk to her?”

“I did,” Maura said. “Didn’t learn anything of note, though. Your husband back yet?”

“Anytime now. He called when they got in range. Nobody likes to get stuck out there in the forest after dark, GPS or no GPS.”

“Why? Big animals?”

“No. A lot of nasty small ones. Snakes, especially.”

“Yuck! I hate snakes.”

“Me, too. I never knew the glories of nature before I moved here from Belem.”

“The federal cops are freezing me out of their investigation, but I have to hang on to see what they come up with, which means I’ve got some time on my hands. I think I might like to try the fishing. Are there any guides?”

“Sure. Want me to find you one?”

“Could you?”

“Glad to. When?”

“If he could drop by tomorrow morning, about eight, it would suit me fine.”

“Leave it to me. Look, there they are.”

Maura turned to see Hector and Silva entering the bar. Her heart gave a little leap when Gonçalves entered behind them. Amanda’s remark of the morning was having repercussions.

“Eight o’clock then?” she asked, lowering her voice. “Can I count on it?”

“It’s off-season, shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll make some calls.”

Amanda’s husband was the next man through the door. The federal cops waved and headed for the stairs. Osvaldo came over to join the women. His wife came around the bar to greet him.

“I need a shower,” he said.

“Who cares?” she said and embraced him anyway.

“Where’s Jade?” Maura asked.

“We brought Amati’s son back with us. Cute little fellow, name of Raoni. She took him home.”

“From what she told me, her housekeeper isn’t going to like that,” Amanda said.

“Alexandra?” Osvaldo said. “No way! Bigoted bitch!”

“How old is the boy?”

“Eight.”

“You discover anything new at the village?” Maura asked.

“Sorry,” Osvaldo said. “Can’t tell you. Chief Inspector’s orders.”

“Oh, come
on
,” Maura said. “The public has a right to know.”

Osvaldo smiled. “He said you’d say that. He also said I shouldn’t believe it, that the public
doesn’t
have a right to know.”

“He’s full of—”

“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. I’m just telling you what he said. And there’s no use leaning on your friend Jade. He made her promise to keep a lid on it as well.”

Two can play at that game
, Maura thought.

“I think he might have cause to regret his attitude,” she said.

I
T WAS
too early for dinner. Maura went back to Jade’s place and found her seated on the couch, a comforting arm around Raoni. They were watching a cartoon.

Raoni turned his big brown eyes on Maura, but not for long.

“He’s really into it, isn’t he?” she asked.

“You’re the third white woman he’s seen,” Jade said. “But this is his first cartoon.”

“Third?”

Jade made a face, and lifted her chin toward the kitchen, where Alexandra was banging pots and pans.

“Is she always that noisy?” Maura asked.

“It’s a protest. For a while, I thought she was going to quit.”

“Might not be a bad thing if she did, a woman like that.”

“I’ve been thinking the same thing.”

“The boy looks okay though,” Maura said. “Better than I expected.”

“He cried all the way back.”

“I thought Indian boys weren’t supposed to cry.”

Jade scoffed. “That’s nonsense. Where did you hear that?”

“I think I saw it in some movie.”

Jade raised an eyebrow. “Movie?”

“About American Indians.”

“Ours are different. They cry all the time. He’s going to do a lot of it tomorrow.”

She shot a quick look at the boy. If he was aware of the fact that they were talking about him, he didn’t show it. His eyes remained fixed on the screen.

“Why tomorrow?” Maura said.

“Because tomorrow is the day we’re going to bury his father.”

Maura, too, looked at Raoni. “Where?” she said.

“In the same spot where the others are.”

“Can I go?”

Jade shook her head. “The Chief Inspector nixed it. He says it’s still a crime scene.”

“I’ve had about all I can stand of that Chief Inspector.” And then, when Jade didn’t react, “Could we have a word? Privately?”

“You can talk right here. He won’t understand anything you say.”

“Maybe not, but … could we go into the kitchen?”

“With Alexandra in there? Forget it! Let’s go onto the back porch.”

“I want you to come clean about what happened today,” Maura said when they were seated. “I need to know what you found in that village.”

Jade sighed, shook her head and set her mouth in a stubborn line. “I can’t tell you.”

It took Maura some effort not to lose her temper. “Do I have to remind you, Jade, that I came all the way up here from São Paulo to help you out? That I took time off from the series I was working on? That Silva and his people wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me? If I hadn’t put the screws on Lana Nogueira—”

Her friend threw up her hands. “I
knew
you were going to take it like this. Look, Maura, I owe you big time. I don’t deny that. And I’m sorry. But he’s the cop, not you. He’s running the case, not you. He has the experience. We don’t. I, for one, intend to trust him—and let him get on with it.”

“It’s not a question of not trusting him. I’m sure he’s a good cop, but—”

“You’re not going to wear me down, Maura. I love you, but you’re not going to wear me down.”

“But
why
? That’s what I want to know. Why does he insist on keeping me in the dark?”

“He feels that if any information were to leak out at this stage it might prejudice—”

“Stop right there. Do you think that if you told me something in confidence I’d pass it on? That I’d talk about it to anyone if you told me not to?”

Jade smiled. “He told me you’d say that.”

Maura didn’t see the humor in it. Her reply was sharp. “What is this guy? A mind reader?”

“He said you’d promise not to tell a soul, but that satisfying your personal curiosity isn’t a good enough reason to tell you anything. He said that, in circumstances like these, he wouldn’t tell his own wife.”

“And you believed that?”

“I did.”

“Oh for heaven’s sake!”

Jade stood up. “I’m tired of trying to placate you, Maura. I don’t think there’s anything I can say to you that will make you see it my way.”

“There isn’t.”

“Then I’m going to see to the boy, and I’m going to sleep. Do you want Alexandra to serve you some dinner?”

“No. I’m going back to the Grand.”

“Don’t drink too much.”

“I’m not going to drink too much. I’m going have a crack at getting something out of that cute young cop.”

D
INNER WAS OVER
. F
OR
privacy’s sake, the cops adjourned to Silva’s room, but they were a chair short, so when Gilda joined them she and Hector had to sit side by side on the bed.

“So the way I figure it,” Arnaldo was saying when she came in, “if our friend Otto is guilty of anything at all—”

“Which both of us doubt,” Gonçalves interjected.

“—it’s transporting lumber he knew was harvested illegally. Big deal, right? More of a distraction than anything else.”

“So you let him go?” Silva asked.

“We did,” Arnaldo said.

“He won’t be there for hours and hours,” Silva said, “so let’s do this: call Alex Sanches. It doesn’t have to be tonight. Tomorrow morning is good enough. Give him the truck’s registration and tell him to stop it on the way to the docks. He’s to get a statement from the driver, photograph the wood and copy the paperwork. Then, he’s to find out who else has been transporting wood from Azevedo. I’d say it’s a sure bet we can nail him, and that IBAMA agent, for illegal logging if nothing else.”

“Leave it to me,” Arnaldo said.

Silva turned to Gilda. “Your turn, my dear. What have you learned?”

“The meat wrapped in the parachute was from a pig,” Gilda said, “and strips had been cut from it after it was roasted. There were pieces of that same meat in the stomachs of the victims. And all died immediately after ingesting it.”

“So now we’ll need a toxology report,” Silva said. He turned to Hector. “Get samples off to Rodrigues as soon as the airport opens in the morning. Tell her to copy Lefkowitz on her findings. Then call him and tell him what’s happening.”

A
T THE
same time Silva was conferring with his colleagues, another get-together was taking place at a
fazenda
some thirty kilometers away. The mayor, Hugo Toledo, was meeting with his fellow landowners, José Frade, Cesar Bonetti, and Roberto Lisboa. Also present were Lisboa’s foreman, Toni Pandolfo, Paulo Cunha, Doctor Pinto, and Father Castori.

“Why couldn’t we do this at the Grand?” José Frade said as he took his seat.

“More confidential this way,” Toledo said. “We don’t want to be seen getting together while those federal cops are in town.”

“You got any idea how long it takes to get from my place to here? I could have been at the Grand in half the time.”

“I know exactly how long it takes,” the mayor said. “But after you’ve heard what we’ve got to say, you’re going to agree that this way is best.”

“
We?
” Frade said. “Who’s we?”

“All in good time, José. Anybody want to refresh their drink before we start?”

Roberto Lisboa did, but the priest got to the bottle first. While Castori was pouring, Frade, still irritated, looked at his watch.

“It’s late,” he said. “How long is this going to take?”

“Not long,” Toledo said.

“So how about you get down to it,” Cunha said. “What’s it about?”

Toledo rose from his chair and looked at each one in turn before he continued. “I think we’ve got a chance—a good
chance now that those damned Indians are gone—of getting the federal government to abolish the reservation. I’ve got the men in Brasilia who can make it happen.”

There was a generalized murmur of approval.

“But,” Toledo said, holding up a finger and waiting for silence before he went on, “now we’ve got a gang of federal cops sticking their noses into our business. And the longer they stay, the more they stir the pot, the more complicated things are going to get.”

“Complicated?” Frade asked. “Define complicated. It’s going to take longer? Or it’s going to cost more?”

“Both,” Toledo said, “so the time has come to take countermeasures to neutralize our unwelcome visitors. I’ve asked you here tonight to get our stories straight.”

“What’s
he
doing here?” Bonetti said, cocking a thumb at the priest.

“He’s here,” Toledo said, “because of what he can bring to the party. And so is Doctor Pinto.” He turned to Frade. “And that, José, is what I meant when I referred to
we
. Doctor, how about if you begin?”

The doctor took a sip of his whiskey and sat up straighter in his chair. “The Federal Police,” he said, “have gotten it into their heads that the Indian didn’t kill Omar Torres.”

“The fuck he didn’t,” Cunha said.

The mayor held up a hand. “Hear him out, Paulo, hear him out. Go on, Doctor.”

“The man conducting the investigation, one Chief Inspector Silva, demonstrated suspicion the first time he saw the body. But he refused to share his observations with me or with Delegado Borges, who was also present. Later, he sent some snip of a girl to conduct a more detailed autopsy. I was there when she did it.”

“And?” Cunha prompted.

“And she was more forthcoming than the Chief Inspector had been. He’d failed to instruct her to keep me out of the loop.”

“She agreed with Silva?” Frade said. “She thought someone else killed Torres? Not the Indian?”

The doctor nodded. “She did.”

“Well, fuck her,” Frade exploded. “Who cares about any stupid theory she might have come up with? Or Silva either, for that matter.”

“I’m afraid it’s more than a theory, José,” the doctor said. “They might well have a point.”

“What point? The savage was found next to Omar’s body. There was blood all over him, and the murder weapon was right next to him. What more proof do you want?”

Toledo walked over and put a friendly hand on Frade’s shoulder. “It’s not what
I
want, it’s what the Chief Inspector wants. Doctor, would you kindly tell José—and the rest of us—how the Chief Inspector came to his conclusion.”

The doctor cleared his throat. “The angle at which the blows were struck seems to indicate that they were delivered by a man at least as tall as Omar was. But the Indian was much shorter. Furthermore, the cuts were on top of each other. A drunken man, they believe, wouldn’t have had that much control over the knife.”

“Maybe it was a drunken woman,” Bonetti said.

It was meant as a joke, but the doctor took him seriously. “The wounds were delivered with great force,” he said. “It’s unlikely a woman could have inflicted them.”

“Unlikely,” Bonetti said, looking around at the others. “But not impossible, right?”

“Dead right,” Lisboa said. “It’s all supposition on their part, pure supposition.”

“I considered filing a report with different conclusions,”
the doctor said. “It’s my right as the town’s medical examiner, except …”